The paper argues that AI alignment depends on a system’s ability to exhibit a coherent moral policy—stable, monotonic, decisive, and Pareto‑viable—rather than on any specific moral standard. The authors test nine large language models across varied moral scenarios and find that none maintain consistent verdicts, with surface‑form changes causing up to 99% shifts in outcomes. This indicates that current LLM agents lack the structural moral competence required for meaningful alignment.
By Arno Libert, Derck W. E. Prinzhorn, Daan R. Henselmans
arXiv:2604. 24155v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The project of aligning machine behavior with human values raises a basic problem: whose moral expectations should guide AI decision-making?
By Benjamin Minhao Chen, Xinyu Xie
arXiv:2607. 00002v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Moral cognition has traditionally been modeled as adherence to fixed ethical theories--deontology, consequentialism, virtue ethics--implemented as static rules or value functions.
By Max Kanwal, Caryn Tran, Patrick Mineault
arXiv:2608. 10327v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Can AI systems be aligned to human values?
By Andrew Smart, Shazeda Ahmed, Jackie Kay, Jimmy Tobin, Kris Shrishak, Abeba Birhane
The paper proposes a developmental framework for autonomous artificial agents that emphasizes learning social norms and alignment through direct interaction with dynamic environments. It argues that intrinsic motivations such as curiosity and competence can guide exploration, but also complicate alignment with human goals. By drawing parallels to child development, the authors suggest that regulatory sandboxes serve as pedagogical spaces where agents gradually acquire moral agency and adapt their behaviors through experience and cooperation.
By Marica Notte, Ludovica Marinucci, Vieri Giuliano Santucci
The paper examines how the rise of AI capable of moral reasoning could reshape meta-ethics, traditionally focused on human ethics. It proposes a framework that identifies new questions about AI’s own ethics from both human and AI perspectives, dividing them into four domains. The author explores how existing meta-ethical theories might apply to these domains and argues that many human-centered formulations will need significant revision to accommodate AI.
By Shang Lu
The paper reports the first empirical study comparing how humans and large language models (LLMs) evaluate perceived moral agency (PMA) in both human and autonomous artificial agents within smart city scenarios. Using a validated PMA scale, 190 human participants and various LLMs were assessed, revealing that humans are perceived to have higher moral agency than artificial agents. When confronted with moral dilemmas, LLMs focus on situational factors such as harm severity and urgency, mirroring the context‑sensitivity observed in human raters.
By Fernanda Mansilla, Aloysius Tok, Bahia Guella\"i, Farah Benamara, Nancy F. Chen
arXiv:2608. 16710v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: As autonomous vehicles (AVs) approach Level 4 and Level 5 operational capability [SAE International, 2018], their on- board decision systems must handle not only safety-critical locomotion but also their subsequent moral weight.
By Thomas Mbrice, Ammar Ali, Sami Mian, Khai Hern Low, Eric Chen, Arshia Aghajani, Wolf Sch\"afer, Amin Shirangi
arXiv:2510. 16380v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As AI systems progress, we rely more on them to make decisions with us and for us.
By Yu Ying Chiu, Michael S. Lee, Rachel Calcott, Brandon Handoko, Paul de Font-Reaulx, Rapha\"el Milli\`ere, Paula Rodriguez, Chen Bo Calvin Zhang, Ziwen Han, Udari Madhushani Sehwag, Yash Maurya, Christina Q Knight, Harry R. Lloyd, Florence Bacus, Conor Downey, Mantas Mazeika, Bing Liu, Yejin Choi, Mitchell L Gordon, Sydney Levine
arXiv:2604. 14990v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: The prospect of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is increasingly driving institutional decisions, and alignment of AGI is a hard problem.
By Till Mossakowski, Helena Esther Grass
arXiv:2402. 06359v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: One of today's most pressing societal challenges is building AI systems whose behaviour, or the behaviour it enables within communities of interacting human and artificial agents, aligns with relevant human values.
By Nardine Osman, Mark d'Inverno
arXiv:2606. 11635v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: For highly capable AI systems to operate safely in dynamic, open-ended environments, they must be able to identify, understand, and respond to moral reasons for action, and constrain their behaviour accordingly.
By Menghang Zhu, Seth Lazar